Thursday, January 26, 2017

Trump's war on facts a losing gambit -- Jan. 26, 2017 column

I am 5’10,” speak
French like a native and play the piano flawlessly. Oh, and Donald Trump just released
his tax returns and resigned as president.

Not one of
those facts is real. They’re falsehoods, fibs, fantasy. OK, whoppers.

They would
be lies -- and I a liar -- if I intended to deceive you. I don’t. Like most
Americans, I respect facts, evidence and truth, which is more than you can say
for President Trump.

Trump’s
revolution showed its disdain for science by scrubbing the White House web site
of all mention of climate change and gagging the Environmental Protection
Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A president
has every right to change policy, but stopping the free flow of facts is wrong.
It goes against the grain of our history.

Long before the
American Revolution, John Adams, later our second president, said in 1770:
“Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence.”

Americans
have prized truth in our leaders, sometimes honored in the breach more than in
the observance, since George Washington. The myth of the boy, his hatchet and
the cherry tree -- “I cannot tell a lie” – gave generations a role model.

In the 20th
Century, Jimmy Carter won the White House promising: “I’ll never tell a lie.” People
rolled their eyes, but Carter’s earnestness was refreshing after the lyin’
Nixon years and Watergate scandal.

Politicians
and presidents do lie, of course, but we’ve never had a president like Trump,
who wields fake facts as emotional prods to rile up his followers.

Trump tried for
years to prove the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and said Hillary
Clinton and her 2008 campaign started the rumor – claims that were repeatedly debunked
and yet built him a following.

He backed
off last September when the lie began to impede his path to the White House,
still insisting that Clinton started it.

Trump won
despite his loose affiliation with truth during the campaign. As president, he has
turned to alternative facts.

“Sean
Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts” that the crowds at Trump’s
inauguration were the biggest ever, despite photo evidence to the contrary, Kellyanne
Conway, a top Trump aide, said last Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

The phrase,
alternative facts, was a chilling reminder of George Orwell’s “1984,” a novel
published in 1932 that envisions a dystopian future where the Ministry of Truth
subverts facts and history. This week, “1984” jumped to No. 1 on Amazon.

Sales of “1984” have soared 9,500 percent since the Trump
inauguration, and publisher Penguin is rushing out a reprint of 75,000 copies.

The Amazon
Top 20 included “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis, about the election of
an authoritarian president wonderfully named Buzz Windrip, and “Brave New
World,” by Aldous Huxley, also a dark view of the future where an authoritarian
regime quashes thought.

If Trump’s
alternative facts were as benign as his wish for longer fingers or thicker
hair, we could ignore them. But he’s no longer a billionaire private citizen
with kooky ideas or a candidate crying “rigged election” in case he loses.

Unable to let
go of his baseless claim that he would have won the popular vote were it not
for up to five million people illegally voting for Hillary Clinton, the president
tweeted his call for a “major investigation” into voter fraud.

No matter
that state election officials insist there’s zero evidence of widespread fraud.
Voter fraud is one of Trump’s unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

It’s
encouraging that some powerful Republicans in Congress want no part in
investigating this particular longstanding belief of Trump’s.

“I don’t see
any evidence,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, chairman of the House
Oversight Committee, told reporters. “But the president has 100,000 people at
the Department of Justice, and if he wants to have an investigation, have at
it.”

Facts are
stubborn things, and people want a president whose facts they can trust. Playing
fast and loose with truth is no way to govern.

As someone
who hates to lose, Trump should realize this gambit won’t win.